


A Series of Events: The Beginning

by bitter_sweet_coffee



Series: A Series of Events [1]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, How Do I Tag, My First Work in This Fandom, count olaf isn't a total bitch, he isn't good either though, this is a neutral take on the series, yes it sounds too much like the original series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:22:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22818439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitter_sweet_coffee/pseuds/bitter_sweet_coffee
Summary: Look, I don't know what to tell you. I also can't write summaries.Let's be honest here, Lemony is an unreliable narrator. He is on the "good" side of the schism and he always kind of hated Olaf. What if he was exaggerating the misfortune of the Baudelaire children?  I can assure you our narrator is very annoyed with the series, and has decided to write it themselves.(Summary sounds bad but just give it a chance maybe?)
Relationships: Count Olaf/Kit Snicket (implied), Klaus Baudelaire & Sunny Baudelaire & Violet Baudelaire
Series: A Series of Events [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640341
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is my first work on AO3. I have always written but never published because I hate myself and my writing. I have a safety net here though because I'm just rewriting an existing series so that's great! I hope you like it, I'm actually working hard and putting a lot of effort into this I hope people read it ;-;
> 
> I know the first few chapters sound too much like the book and trust me I changed as much as I could, but I didn't want to change half the stuff anyways! It was good expository shit! I promise it will diverge more later on, but universe establishing can't really change.

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off not reading anything in the first place. There are no happy endings in books, but that is not to say that all endings are bad.

This seems to be the case in the lives of the three Baudelaire children. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent, charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features. Contrary to popular belief, they were not as unlucky or unfortunate as others may paint them to be.

There is an old saying of unknown origin which best describes the circumstance of this ambiguous tale, which goes as such: a miserable painting is not miserable by its own hand, but the fault of the painter who did not properly rinse out his paint brush. No matter how hard he may try to clean the muddy colours from his brush, his painting cannot be saved if the water he uses is also depressing and dirty.

I am not Lemony Snicket, and I am not here to tell you about the unpleasant tale of the Baudelaire siblings, as there is no such thing as an inherently unfortunate tale. 

I’m sorry to tell you this, as I am sure you have read the acclaimed Series of Unfortunate Events and were eager to read them further. Perhaps you picked up this book by mistake thinking it was from the Snicket series, and read what sounded like the tale you are familiar with, but with some notable differences.

But I am not sorry for telling the tale as it was, and it is unsurprising to see that Snicket felt the need to manipulate the truth and tell the story he wanted to see. 

However, this book is not titled “The Hypocrisy of Lemony Snicket” although that does have a nice ring to it. That sentence also rhymed, implying that there was a craft to my writing when it was actually a mere accident. 

This is a tale about the real Baudelaires, and the various events they were involved in: which were not unfortunate nor fortunate. 

Their story begins one day at Briny Beach. The three Baudelaire children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city. Occasionally, their parents gave them permission to take a rickety trolley alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner. 

This particular morning was grey and cloudy, which didn’t bother the Baudelaires one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists and it was impossible to find a good place to lay one’s blanket. On grey and cloudy days the Baudelaires had the beach to themselves to do what they liked. 

Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, liked to skip rocks. Like most fourteen year-olds, she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Violet used her right hand than when she used her left. As she skipped rocks, she was looking out at the horizon and thinking about an invention she wanted to build.

Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair. This morning she was thinking about how to construct a device that could return rocks after you had skipped them into the ocean.

Klaus Baudelaire, the middle child (and only boy) liked to examine creatures in tide pools. Klaus was a little older than twelve and wore glasses which made him look intelligent. He was intelligent. 

The Baudelaire parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room filled with thousands of books on nearly every subject. Being only twelve, Klaus of course had not read all of the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them, and retained a lot of the information from his readings. He knew how to tell an alligator from a crocodile, he knew who killed Julius Caesar, and he knew much about the tiny, slimy animals found at Briny Beach, which he was examining now.

Sunny Baudelaire, the youngest, liked to bite things. She was an infant, and very small for her age, scarcely larger than a boot. What she lacked in size however, she made up for with the size and sharpness of her four teeth.

Sunny was at an age where one mostly speaks in a series of unintelligible shrieks, much like A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Most people had trouble understanding what it was Sunny was saying, just as one might struggle to read pretentious literature written by elitist snobs who love the sound of their own prose, using words only so they can smugly define them.  
In the distance along the misty shore of Briny Beach, a tall figure could be seen walking towards the Baudelaire children. Sunny had already been staring and shrieking at the figure for some time when Klaus looked up from the spiny crab he was examining, and saw it too. He reached over and touched Violet’s arm, bringing her out of her inventing thoughts.

“Look at that,” Klaus said, and pointed towards the figure. It was drawing closer, and the children could see a few details. It was about the size of an adult except its head was tall and rather square. 

“What do you think it is?” Violet asked.

“I don’t know,” Klaus responded while squinting at it, “But it seems to be moving directly towards us.”

“We’re alone on the beach,” Violet said, a little nervously, “There’s nobody else it could be moving towards.” She felt the slender, smooth stone in her left hand, which she had been about to skip as far as she could. She had a thought to throw it at the figure, because it seemed so frightening.

“It only seems scary,” Klaus reminded as if reading his sister’s thoughts, “Because of the mist.” 

This was not true. Although the Baudelaires’ misery has been exaggerated, this man and his actions were always overlooked, even though they are the primary cause of all bad things to happen in the childrens’ lives. 

There is another famous saying, from an unknown origin, which claims that ignorance is the greatest evil, and in the case of the mysterious figure, his ignorance causes countless problems for the Baudelaire children, which could have been avoided if he simply did not exist.

This figure turned out to be someone the children recognized: a friend of their parents, Mr. Poe.

Mr. Poe was a person the Baudelaires had met numerous times at dinner parties, which they always attended. This was one of the things the Baudelaires loved about their parents; they did not send the children away when they had company over, but allowed them to join the adults at the dinner table and participate in the conversation, as long as they helped clear the table.The children remembered Mr. Poe, primarily because he was constantly excusing himself to have a coughing fit in the next room. 

The man took off his top hat, which made his head appear large and square in the fog, and stood for a moment coughing loudly into a white handkerchief. Violet and Klaus both moved forward to shake his hand and say how do you do.

“How do you do?” said Violet and Klaus in unison. 

“Odo you!” said Sunny, who spoke at the same time as her siblings, but evidently did not say the same phrase (though she did have the same intention.)

“Fine, thank you,” said Mr. Poe, but he looked quite the opposite. For a few seconds, nobody said anything, and the children wondered what Mr. Poe was doing at Briny Beach when he should be at the bank in the city where he worked; he certainly wasn’t dressed for the beach.

“It’s a nice day,” Violet said finally, attempting to make conversation. Sunny made a noise that sounded like an angry bird, and Klaus picked her up and held her. 

“Yes, it is a nice day,” Mr, Poe said absently, staring out at the empty beach, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you children.” The three Baudelaire siblings looked at him. Violet, with some embarrassment, felt the stone in her left hand and was glad she did not throw it at Mr. Poe, though I must say their lives may have been better off if she did.

“Your parents have perished in a terrible fire,” he said. The children did not say anything. “They perished,” Mr. Poe said, “In a terrible fire that destroyed your entire home. I am very, very sorry, my dears.”

Violet took her eyes off Mr. Poe and stared out at the ocean. Mr. Poe had never called the Baudelaire children “my dears” before. She understood the words he was saying, but thought he must be joking, playing a terrible prank on her and her siblings.

“Perished means ‘killed.’” Mr. Poe explained.

“We know what ‘perished’ means,” Klaus said angrily. He did know what the word “perished” meant, but he was still having trouble understanding exactly what it was that Mr. Poe had said. It seemed to him like Mr. Poe had somehow misspoken. 

“The fire department arrived of course,” Mr. Poe said, “But they arrived too late. The entire house was engulfed in fire. It burned to the ground.”

Klaus pictured all the books in the library going up in flames. Now he would never read any of them.

Mr. Poe coughed several times into his handkerchief before continuing. “I was sent to retrieve you here and take you to my home, where you’ll stay until we figure things out. I am the executor of your parents’ estate, which means I will be handling their enormous fortune and figuring out where you children will go. When Violet comes of age, the fortune will be yours, but the bank will take charge of it until you are old enough.”

Although he said he was the executor, Violet felt like Mr. Poe was the executioner, and perhaps she was right. He has simply walked down the beach and changed their lives forever.

“Come with me,” Mr. Poe said, and held out his hand. In order to take it, Violet had to drop the stone she was holding. Klaus took Violet’s other hand, and Sunny took Klaus’ other hand, even though she was already being carried. 

In this manner, the Baudelaire children, now Baudelaire orphans, were taken away from the beach, and from their previous lives.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Sorry I totally meant to post this earlier but I was too lazy to type it. I'll try and do a chapter per week throughout March, and then in April I can start posting more frequently! I hope it was worth the wait though!

Chapter 2

There is no point to me describing how Violet, Klaus, and Sunny felt: you will either get it, or you won’t. If you have lost someone you love dearly, you can understand how indescribable and immeasurable grief is. If you haven’t, I consider you the most unlucky, for many reasons. 

The first is that you will have to lose someone eventually in your life, and as of now you are unequipped to handle such a loss. It is because of this, that you will be unable to empathize with most people, as they have lost loved ones, leaving you helpless as they grieve. And finally, you will not be able to understand how Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were feeling, and how the words Mr. Poe said to them on Briny Beach would linger in their minds forever. 

Although you may not have lost anyone yet, you are probably feeling quite lost as you try to understand grief. This is the closest you will come to understanding grief, as people who lost loved ones often feel lost themselves. 

The Baudelaires felt lost, and had not just lost their parents and home, but their passions as well. Violet could not think of inventions, as if the gears in her head had seized. Klaus had no desire to read, as every time he thought of a question (as his mind often did) he was reminded that the Baudelaire library had perished, and there was no point in asking questions that could not be answered. Even Sunny, who was still too young to grasp the whole of what was going on, was much less enthusiastic in her biting.

When they went to visit the remains of their mansion, they were only more grief stricken. Here and there, the children could see traces of the enormous home they have loved. With their home destroyed, the Baudelaire orphans had to reside with the Poe household, which was far from enjoyable.

Mr. Poe was constantly coughing, but spent most of his time away from home. Whether his absence was good or bad remained unclear, but the other household members were not anymore enjoyable than the banker himself. Mrs. Poe had bought them clothing, but it was obnoxiously coloured and itched. The two children, Edgar and Albert, were loud and crude, and very unwilling to share their tiny room with the orphans. The house smelled awful and the meals were bland, but the Baudelaires were hardly able to register the unpleasant environment, as they were too busy missing their own home.

It was over a boiled meal that the Baudelaires were told they would be leaving the Poe household the very next morning. “Good,” said Albert, who had a piece of potato stuck between his teeth. “Now we can have our room back to ourselves, I'm tired of sharing it. Violet and Klaus are always moping around” he complained.

“And the baby bites,” added Edgar, tossing a chicken bone to the floor like an animal, as opposed to the son of a banker. “Where are we going?” Violet asked nervously. After a coughing fit that only prolonged the Baudelaires anticipation, Mr. Poe finally managed to inform them of their fate. 

“I have made arrangements for you to be raised by a distant relative of yours who lives on the other side of town. His name is Count Olaf,” he said, and was greeted with silence. Violet. Klaus, and Sunny looked at one another, unsure of what to think. On one hand, they did not want to live with the Poes any longer. However, they had never heard of Count Olaf and did not know what he would be like. 

“Your parents’ will instructs that you will be raised in the most convenient way possible. Since you are familiar with the city, it would be best for you to live here, and Count Olaf is your only relative who lives in this geographical location: making him your closest relative.”

Klaus thought this over for a few moments, still unable to fully grasp what was going on. “But our parents never mentioned Count Olaf, how close of a relative is he?” he asked, quite certain that “closest relative” implied a hereditary relationship, not a geographical one.

“The funny thing is that we aren’t exactly sure. He is definitely not the closest relative on your family tree, but he was the first and only person on the list of permissible guardians, as instructed by the will.” However, the Baudelaires did not find this funny, as it only increased their worry over who this Count Olaf may be.

“If he lives in the city, why did our parents never invite him over?”

“Perhaps he was very busy,” Mr. Poe said. “He is an actor by trade, and often travels around the country with various theatre companies.” “I thought he was a Count,” Klaus remarked.

“He is both a Count and and actor, which must mean he is even busier, and why you have never heard of him,” Mr. Poe said. “Now I don’t mean to cut our dinner short, but you children have to pack up your things, and I have to return to the bank to do some more work. Much like your new guardian. I am also very busy.” 

The Baudelaire children had many more questions, but Mr. Poe had already excused himself from the table, and his trail of coughing followed him all the way out the front door, which creaked as it shut.

The orphans made their way upstairs to the bedroom, and glumly packed their belongings, which were few in number. Klaus looked distastefully at the ugly clothing Mrs. Poe bought them as he packed them away, while Violet looked around the smelly room with hazy eyes. Sunny crawled over to Edgar and Albert’s shoes, and bit into each pair, leaving holes to ensure she wouldn’t be forgotten.

The Baudelaires would look at one another, but they all had nothing to say. They hardly slept that night, partially due to the loud snoring of the Poe brothers, but more so because of their own worried thoughts. 

Finally, it was morning, and Mr. Poe knocked on the door and stuck his head in the bedroom. “Rise and shine Baudelaires,” he said. “It’s time for you to go to Count Olaf’s.” 

Violet looked around the bedroom for the last time. Even though she didn’t like it, she felt very nervous about leaving. “Do we have to go right at this minute?” she asked hesitantly. Mr. Poe opened his mouth to speak, but had to cough for quite a while before he was able to answer, once again creating suspense for the orphans.

“Yes, you do. I’m dropping you off on my way to the bank, so we need to leave as soon as possible!” he said, the stressed tone of his voice used to usher the children out as quickly as they could.

Mr. Poe’s car left the Poe residence, and the Baudelaires were grateful they did not have to smell whatever they had smelt when in the care of the Poe family. On their way to Count Olaf’s house, they passed horse-drawn carriages, motorcycles, and even the Fickle Fountain, an elaborately carved monument that occasionally spat out water in which young children played. They also passed an enormous pile of dirt and ash where the Royal Gardens once stood, consumed by flames long ago.

Mr. Poe drove down a narrow alley lined with pale brick houses, and stopped halfway down the block. “Here we are!” Mr. Poe said excitedly, “Your new home.” The Baudelaire children looked out and saw the prettiest house on the block. The bricks had been cleaned very well, and through the wide and open windows they could see an assortment of well-groomed plants.

Standing in the doorway, with one hand on the shiny brass doorknob, was an older woman, smartly dressed, who was smiling at the children; in the other hand she carried a flower pot. “Hello there! You must be the children Count Olaf is adopting,” she called out. 

Violet opened the car door and got out the shake the woman’s hand. It felt firm and warm, and for the first time in a long while, Violet felt as if her life and the lives of her siblings might turn out well after all. 

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we are. I am Violet Baudelaire, and this is my brother Klaus, and my sister Sunny. And this is Mr. Poe, who has been arranging things for us since the death of our parents.” “Yes, I heard about the accident,” the woman said sympathetically, as everyone said how do you do. “I am Justice Strauss.” 

“That’s an unusual first name,” Klaus remarked. It’s my title,” she explained, “not my first name. I serve as a judge in the High Court.” “How fascinating,” Violet said. “Are you married to Count Olaf?”

“Goodness me, no,” Justice Strauss said. “I don’t actually know him that well, he is my next-door neighbour.” The children looked away from the well-scrubbed house of Justice Strauss to the one with a questionable sanitary grade next door. 

It was much larger in comparison, but not in the way one would typically admire. It seemed too large, and vacant of life. Most parts of the house were more like ashen rubble, which collapsed in a way that reminded the Baudelaires of the remains of their home. 

The majority of windows were broken, and the drapes were pulled tightly shut. There was also a tall tower covered in soot, which did not look like it could stand for very much longer. The front door was a poorly attached sheet of plywood with a mysterious eye painted right in the middle in red. Besides the eye, the door had not been painted, leaving the stamp on the wood visible. 

The building appeared to have been beautiful, perhaps even enchanting once, but it seemed like all the life and appeal had been sucked right out of it, leaving behind a sagging, ashen remain. “Oh!” said Sunny, and there was a rare moment where everyone knew what she meant.

“Well, it was nice to meet you!” Violet said to Justice Strauss, who then gestured to her flower pot. “Perhaps one day you could come over and help me with my gardening!” 

“That would be very pleasant,” Violet said, very sadly. She could not help but think it would be far more pleasant to live in Justice Strauss’ house, instead of Count Olaf’s. She did not trust the painting of the eye on the front door, and wondered why one would paint such a thing. 

Klaus stepped forwards to Count Olaf’s door, and knocked, his knuckles rapping right in the middle of the painted eye. There was a pause, and the door creaked open, and the children saw Count Olaf for the first time.

“Hello, hello, hello,” Count Olaf said in a raspy whisper. He was very tall and extremely thin, dressed in a dark grey suit which had dark splotches and stains in various places; his left sleeve was singed at the bottom. His face was unshaven, and unlike most humans who had two eyebrows, he only had one, which ran across his face in a prominent line.

HIs eyes were dark and shiny, as if they were made of glass, and appeared as if there was nothing behind them. If he wasn’t staring directly at them, the Baudelaires could have easily assumed he was blind. Even so, it did not feel like he was truly looking at anything. 

“Hello, my children. Please step into your new home, and wipe your feet outside so no mud gets indoors,” he recited, almost robotically. Perhaps it was the emptiness in his eyes that made his words sound distant, as Mr. Poe only heard the phoney enthusiasm in his voice, and believed the actor to be a flamboyant and extravagant man. 

However, as they stepped inside the house, Mr. Poe and the orphans realized what a ridiculous thing the Count had said. The room they had just entered was the dirtiest they had ever seen, and a little bit of mud from outdoors may have made the place cleaner, if not a difference at all.

Even by the dim light of the extremely damaged chandelier which hung above them, the children could see everything in the house was disgustingly filthy, and Klaus had to use all his will not to burst into tears at the sight of it. “This room looks like it could use some work,” Mr. Poe said, peering around the gloom.

Something flickered in Count Olaf’s eyes like a flame, but whatever it may have been, it was not around for long. He swallowed-- the children could see his Adam’s apple bob in his skinny throat-- and shrugged his patchy shoulders. The fire died out just as quickly as it started, unlike the fire that destroyed the Baudelaires home, and led them here to their questionable new guardian. The flame left behind smoke, which clouded the mysterious man’s vision once more.

“All right then,” he said, unsure of how to respond to the banker, who was oblivious to the potential danger of his comment. “Thank you very much Mr. Poe, for bringing them here. Children, I will now show you to your room.”

“Goodbye, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny,” Mr. Poe said, stepping back through the front door. “I hope you will be very happy here. I will continue to see you occasionally, and you can always contact me at the bank if you have any questions.”

“But we don’t even know where the bank is,” Klaus said. “Don’t bother with that, I know where it is.” Count Olaf grumbled. “Goodbye, Mr. Poe,” he called out before shutting the door. “And good riddance.” he mumbled to himself quietly, to the point where the Baudelaires thought they had only imagined him saying it.

The Baudelaires were uncertain about how they felt. They wished they had stayed with the Poe family, even if their house smelled and the bedroom was cramped. And yet, they could not help but feel a twinge of guilt, and maybe even pity for the Count. He was certainly not a person who their parents would invite over (which explains his absence in their life up until this point) but he certainly could be much worse.

As the orphans stared at the ground in thought, they noticed that although he was wearing shoes, Count Olaf wasn’t wearing any socks. They could see, in the space between his tattered trouser cuff and his black shoe, that Count Olaf had a poorly wrapped piece of white gauze around his left ankle, which appeared to be the only clean thing in the entire house so far.

They wondered what could possibly be under the unusually wrapped gauze, as if it could answer all the questions they had about Count Olaf, or perhaps something else they were yet to learn of. 

This first tiny mystery would have a domino effect on the rest of their lives, causing the series of events you are about to bear witness to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Another chapter done, now just an entire series to continue, right? I have some ideas for a sequel series and a prequel, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself (not to mention it would be much harder to write without a reference). 
> 
> Also yes, I am basically redoing Olaf's character. Lemony was a biased little shit and an unreliable narrator (but I love him so don't attack me) so I want to try and stay neutral and somewhat close to canon, but only for now. I started planning out the other books in the series and let me tell you, it progressively diverges from the canon.


	3. QUICK UPDATE (will delete later)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I just wanted to say very quickly That I’m just a little busy with my thesis for university right now, but I’ll be done in a week so I can get back to writing this!!!
> 
> I have chapters 3-5 written, they just need editing and to be typed since I wrote them by hand. After this week it should be smooth sailing from here on out. 
> 
> Fun fact: my thesis is based on the poem at the end of the series, “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” and it was so I could continue thinking of asoue even when I didn’t have time to write :”) 
> 
> Okay, typing this on my phone so I have no idea what it’ll look like published, but whatever! It’ll be fine. I promise you all some quarantine reads asap, just need to actually do my work first <3

Probably should have typed my update here... whatever it’s in the chapter notes


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